Oops did you choose the greater evil?
2d 11h ago by beehaw.org/u/Dippy in politicalmemes@lemmy.ca from beehaw.orgDon't be a harm increaser SMH
I find this one a bit baffling.
The only people I hear argue that the DNC and RNC are effectively the same are not people who are voting for the RNC.
Many very left leaning Dems don't feel there is a fundamental difference between parties anymore because BOTH parties capitulate to corporate donors.
There's been no campaign finance reform. Campaign finance reform holds broad, bipartisan popularity, with roughly 70-88% of Americans supporting stricter limits on money in politics. Majorities favor reversing Citizens United and reducing donor influence, as most citizens believe big donors, corporations, and special interests have too much power. Neither political party has addressed this.
Neither Dems nor Repubs are interested in serving the people, they are interested in serving themselves, and their corporate donors.
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Reagan gave us trickle down economics and destabilization of south America and the Middle East with the Nicaragua contra scandal to funnel weapons to Iraq and Iran. Our tax dollars being used to kill brown people. During the 1980s, the United States aided Saddam Hussein’s regime primarily to counter Iran, providing billions in economic aid, dual-use technology, and crucial battlefield intelligence, particularly during the Iran-Iraq War (1980–1988). The U.S. supported Iraq's military efforts, ensuring Baghdad did not lose to Iran, despite knowledge of chemical weapons usage. (Didn't we eventually fight a war to get rid of saddam? Oops 😬)
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The first Bush was also involved in the contra scandal. Just before leaving office, President Bush pardoned six Reagan administration officials, including former Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger, who were charged with crimes related to the Iran-Contra affair.
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Clinton, Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act of 1999: Repealed the 1933 Glass-Steagall Act, allowing commercial banks, securities firms, and insurance companies to consolidate. This removed controls on banks that allowed them to over speculate, and allowed consolidation of industries to be too big to fail. (This set is up for the supprime mortgage disaster that left tax payers holding the bag. Oops.) Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000: Exempted over-the-counter derivatives—including credit default swaps—from regulation. Telecommunications Act of 1996: Significantly deregulated the broadcasting and telecommunications markets. (The deregulation stipulation was that these companies would be rolling out broadband in exchange for deregulation and tax breaks. We still have communities in the USA that don't have broadband. The telecoms laughed all the way to the bank, and jacked their prices way up. Oops.) President Bill Clinton's administration (1993–2001) was involved in several military conflicts and interventions, primarily focused on peacekeeping in the Balkans, stopping ethnic cleansing, and responding to terrorism. Key actions included NATO bombing campaigns in Bosnia (1995) and Kosovo (1999), the failed mission in Somalia (1993), the occupation of Haiti (1994), and cruise missile strikes against Iraq and terrorist sites in Afghanistan/Sudan.
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Bush the second coming, Iraq War (2003–2011): Launched based on assertions that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and threatened peace. The invasion swiftly removed Saddam, but sparked a long insurgency and sectarian violence. There were no weapons of mass destruction. It was bullshit that helped his buddies in haliburton get rich on the tax payers dime bombing brown people. Oh, remember Guantanamo and the torture? How about the slow response to hurricane Katrina that devastated new Orleans? Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff, Lewis "Scooter" Libby, was convicted of obstruction of justice and perjury in a case involving the leaking of CIA agent Valerie Plame's identity. (Oops we sabotaged our ability to gather intelligence.) Dismissal of U.S. Attorneys in 2006, the Department of Justice fired eight U.S. attorneys, raising allegations of political manipulation within the Department of Justice.
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Obama gave us the affordable care act, and capitulated to the insurance industries by not pushing harder for single payer care.
This is why many very left leftists were unhappy about the ACA, it didn't go far enough, and much of that law was written with lobbyists from health insurance companies who only care about their profits, and not about the human beings being insured.
ACA subsidies that helped people pay for insurance expired. Republicans were happy to let those subsidies expire. Dems had leverage with the shut down at the end of 2025, and broad support for keeping the government shut down to use that leverage to extend the subsidies. The dems ended the shut down over on a promise from the GOP to go back to the drawing board for ACA subsidies at the start of 2026; and like always the Republicans broke their promise. Why roll over when you have leverage to help the American people? It's because their corporate donors didn't want the government shut down.
So those of us on the far left don't see much action from the dems in terms of helping people, while republicans also don't help people on top of seeking to actively hurt specific groups of people. When you have to decide between a shit sandwich and a piss sandwich some of us are like, ya know what, I'd rather go hungry.